How DOES A Believer Get An Erection?

How would a man get an erection with a god watching?

Fully God and Fully Man? A Logical Contradiction

Many Christians believe that Jesus is both fully God and fully man. This is a logical contradiction though, which indicates that God is not, as some believers assert, under the laws of logic.

There is No God and You Know It

* A Frequent VidCast where the infidelguy tells why god(s) make zero freaking sense.

Ali G vs Religion

God sucks

The Rise of Atheism - ABC plus Christopher Hitchens

A large convention of atheists gathered today in Virginia, where men, women and children eagerly proclaimed that God does not exist.

While their views still may be the minority in the country, atheists have become more vocal and visible in recent years.

T-shirts, bumper stickers and even rap songs proclaim atheists' beliefs. Atheist summer camps now exist for children.

"Over the last 20 years," said Alan Wolfe of Boston College, "the number of people willing to tell people in surveys that they don't believe in God have pretty much doubled."

Books denying God's existence have topped bestseller lists, and Congress has its first self-proclaimed atheist, Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif.

"A lot of respectable people are coming out and saying they are very happy to dispel the myths of the Bible," said Margaret Downey of Atheist Alliance International.

Some atheists said their profile has increased because of a rise in religious extremism, like the Islamic fundamentalism behind the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and the rise of the Christian right in the United States.

Gathering of the Godless

Meanwhile, the Internet has helped unite non-believers. In fact, this weekend's convention sold out, and had a waiting list of 600 people.

Besides listening to speakers, convention attendees can buy merchandise like a born-again-atheist hat, atheist-on-board signs for those with kids, or after-the-rapture mints.

They also had the opportunity to mingle with celebrity atheists like authors Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins.

On "Good Morning America Weekend Edition," Hitchens said American believers should recognize they live in a secular state.

"It would be better for them if they didn't give themselves false conciliation," he said. "My challenge is really to say, 'Can you name me a moral action or a statement that has been made by a believer that couldn't have been made by a non-believer?'"

And while the stigma associated with atheism may be diminishing, the majority of Americans say they would not vote for an atheist for president.


But, Hitchens said he believes people would vote for an atheist candidate.

"They haven't had an offer from a decent atheist yet," he said.

And while Hitchens said atheists tend to be liberal, he said the group doesn't back a particular

presidential candidate.

- ABCNews.com

The Christian Questionnaire

The questions follow. Under no circumstances will “The LORD works in mysterious ways” or other arguments in that vein be acceptable. If a question does not apply to your particular sect, explain why.

Thank you!

1. If necessary, use this space to explain any unique or unusual beliefs your sect has about the nature of your god, heaven, hell, the Bible, the Holy Spirit/Ghost, Satan, or other theological matters.
2. Explain why your god’s only son had to die so we can go to magic happy land when we croak.
3. Did everyone who died before Jesus died go to Hell? Justify your answer.
4. If a Catholic, justify the Inquisition and other persecutions of “heretics” throughout the centuries, concentrating on why the Pelagianists, the Priscillianists, and the Manichaeans were persecuted; if a Protestant, justify the witch trials and the way that Protestants constantly hunted down native Americans until there were so few that the government could simply take their land; if a member of an Eastern Orthodox church, justify the persecutions of the Old Believers after the reforms of the seventeenth century.
5. Explain why your sect (whether Catholic, Protestant, or Eastern Orthodox) pursued, tortured, and killed people who were not Christian.
6. Explain why your sect (whether Catholic, Protestant, or Eastern Orthodox) pursued, tortured, and killed people who were not members of your particular sect.
7. Explain why I should believe that your god is all-good when the only real information we have about him is the Bible, which clearly describes him as both good and evil. (See Isaiah 30:32, Luke 14:26, Numbers 31:17-18, Matthew 10:34, Amos 3:6, Deuteronomy 18:8, Deuteronomy 20:16, Exodus 20:5, Exodus 32:27, Isaiah 45:7, Psalms 52:5, Luke 22:36, and Jeremiah 18:11 for a small sample of Biblical passages which describe Jehovah as having an evil morality at times).
8. Explain why, when racism is clearly wrong, Jesus was clearly a racist (see Mark 7:25-29). NOTE: under no circumstances will I believe that racism is morally acceptable.
9. Explain why, when discrimination against women is clearly wrong, the Bible clearly supports the oppression of women. Answering this question entails refuting 1 Cor 11 and 1 Tim 2:11-15. NOTE: under no circumstances will I believe that discrimination against women solely on the basis of sex is morally acceptable.
10. Explain why, when slavery is clearly wrong, the Bible clearly supports slavery. Answering this question entails refuting 1 Peter 2:18. NOTE: under no circumstances will I believe that slavery is an acceptable way to structure an economy.
11. Explain why children should submit to their parents’ decisions even when those decisions are clearly evil. Answering this question entails refuting Deuteronomy 21:18-21, Proverbs 13:24, and Hebrews 12:7-8.
12. Explain why, if your god loves us all, more than half of us are going to Hell after we die. Specifically, refute or explain the following words of Christ, as presented in the New Testament: “Many are called but few are chosen,” and “Straight is the gate, and narrow is the way that leadeth unto salvation, and few there be that find it.” If your god loves all of us, couldn’t he find a better way?
13. Explain what type of offense could possibly justify eternal, unbearable torture in Hell; if your sect does not believe in Hell, then refute every passage in the Old and New Testaments which describes Hell (such as 2 Thessalonians 1:8-9 and Revelation 20:15). (Do not exceed 100 words.)
14. Explain how your god can be both just and merciful, when these terms apparently contradict each other.
15. Explain why possession by demons and/or other evil spirits was common during the time of Jesus, but hardly mentioned at all in the Old Testament, and apparently has been explained completely away today by things such as epilepsy and schizophrenia.
16. Explain why, if the personality resides in the soul, things like drugs and brain damage can affect someone’s personality.
17. If heaven is a place where everyone is perfectly happy, then explain how I could be happy in heaven if I had loved ones in Hell.
18. What is Heaven like?
19. What is Hell like?
20. Explain why original sin exists. Why should I be eternally tortured for something that a pair of naked fruit-munching simpletons did in a garden over six thousand years ago? If you believe that children are born stained because they were conceived sexually, explain why I would be punished for something my parents did by your merciful and just god. If this does not apply to your sect, explain why.
21. Explain why getting dunked in or sprinkled with water will prevent me from being eternally tortured for the actions of the naked fruit-munching simpletons mentioned in #19.
22. If your god did not want Adam and Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, why did he put the tree in the garden of Eden (and at the center, no less)? Was it for shade? If so, why use something so dangerous as a shade tree? If the purpose of the tree was to tempt Adam and Eve, explain why it’s OK for your god to engage in a practice that our modern-day courts of law refer to as “entrapment.”
23. Explain why sex, potentially one of the most wonderful, beautiful things in human nature, is considered “bad” by your particular sect. If your sect does not consider sex to be “bad,” then refute Matthew 19:12, 1 Corinthians 7 (particularly verses 1 and 9), Galatians 5:17, 1 Thessalonians 4:3, James 1:14-15, Matthew 24:38, Luke 17:27, and Revelation 14:4.
24. Explain why, if Jesus was perfect, he thought that the end of the world was coming soon, when it has clearly not come yet. (See Matthew 16:27-28.)
25. Explain why some people (James, Peter, Paul, Thomas, etc.) should get convincing physical proof of miracles, while the rest of us are supposed to take these happenings on faith.
26. Why are the stories of the crucifixion and resurrection inconsistent?
27. If you are a Protestant or a member of an Eastern Orthodox church, explain why you are still using the Catholic Bible, which was formalized by a vote among (supposedly divinely inspired) cardinals and bishops in the fourth century CE, when you disagree with the idea that the Pope, who is higher in the Catholic hierarchy, is divinely inspired; if a Catholic, explain why your church accepts the canonical Bible while rejecting the Apocrypha. (Do not use the “divinely inspired” argument: Because I am not religious, I do not give it the credence that you do).
28. If your god is kind and gentle, why do some animals have to eat meat?
29. If your god is kind and gentle, why did he create parasites?
30. If your god wants us to worship him through our own free will, why does he threaten us with Hell? (The most common claim that Christians make involving God’s motivation for desiring worship is that he desires worship springing from the pure love of the worshipper. Doesn’t his threat of Hell mean that a large number of worshippers worship him out of purely selfish motives?)
31. Why would your god deliberately cause sinners to sin? (See Romans 9:15-23 and numerous parts of the book of Exodus where Jehovah says, “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart.”) Are these sinners still responsible for the sins which your god forces them, against their will, to commit? Justify your answer.
32. If Jesus did have to die, why did someone (specifically, Judas) have to be damned in order accomplish the death and resurrection of Jesus? (Jesus was at least a volunteer for the cross; I doubt that your god asked Judas if he was willing to go to Hell so that the resurrection could be accomplished.)
33. If Judas was willing to go to Hell for humanity (see #31), didn’t he make more of a sacrifice than Jesus, who spent only three hours in pain? Shouldn’t we then be worshipping Judas?
34. Why should we accept the words of the gospel writers as truth when they are known to be liars? (See Romans 3:7.)
35. Do you believe that your god is anti-homosexual? If so, explain why he would create homosexuals in the first place. If not, refute or explain away Leviticus 20:13 and Romans 1:26-27.
36. Explain why prayer is OK, but spell casting is not, when both amount to the same thing: requesting that a superior supernatural force to intercede in a way that would be impossible according to the normally accepted laws of physics.
37. According to the Gospels, from the Christian standpoint, Jesus was the most important person to ever live. From the Roman standpoint, Jesus was a huge pain in the ass because of his political activities. Explain why nothing was written about his life for over thirty years after his death, and nothing except the Gospels was written until the third century CE.
38. Explain why you believe a person whose life is so poorly documented (see #36) was even ever born.
39. Define the word “Christ,” including references to the pagan origins and meaning of the word.
40. Explain why Jesus, who was anti-Gentile (see Mark 7:25-29) and anti-sex (see Luke 14:26 and Matthew 19:12), would want to be anointed with oil in a pagan sexual rite after his death (see your definition for #38).
41. In light of Matthew 10:34, explain why Jesus is called “the Prince of Peace.”
42. The name “Jesus” has been anglicized. What was the original (Hebrew) name of Jesus? Where did you get this information? This is a bonus question.
43. Why is it that the life of Jesus was so similar to the lives of pagan Christs, particularly Herakles, Dionysios, and Asklepios?
44. If your god requires that people believe in him and follow his orders through their own free will, why do Christians push their views on public policy?
45. Explain why being a good Christian requires you to push your beliefs on others. If you do not believe that you have to push your views on others (no matter how much this annoys them), explain why you do not believe this despite the fact that the New Testament seems to suggest that you must do this to get to Heaven (for instance, in Matthew 28:19-20).
46. Explain why spreading the “truth of Christ” requires you to spread lies about other religions, such as the idea that Wiccans (so-called “white witches”) worship the Christian devil. (Incidentally, they don’t, and this rumor has been persistently spread by Christians since the second century CE).
47. At no point in the four Gospels did Jesus claim to be the son of your god. (He said “son of man” quite frequently, and at one point referred to himself as “a son of god,” but that was a common Hebrew expression at the time. Someone who was “a son of god” was a Jew. This reflected the Israelites’ belief that they were the chosen people of your god. See also Job 1:6). Why, then, do you believe that Jesus was divine? If you don’t believe that Jesus was divine, then why do you call yourself a Christian?
48. Given the fact that Jesus did not say anything original (the Golden Rule and the “turn the other cheek” idea were plagiarized from Buddhism; and the Beatitudes were common in the Jewish devotional literature at the time), why do you see Jesus as such a great thinker/philosopher/ethicist?
49. When Jesus said, “Resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also,” why do you suppose that most Christians fight for their rights? To put it another way, why don’t we, as a country whose population is 85% Christian, let the government abuse us?
50. Why are so many Christian holidays on the same day as Pagan holidays? Couldn’t the early Church fathers have converted pagans only by appealing to their reason and/or faith if Christianity really is the true religion?
51. Explain how your god can be “just and merciful” in light of Exodus 20:5.
52. Do you believe that the Old Testament should be accepted as part of Christian theology? If so, explain how you can worship such a cruel, sadistic asshole (see Numbers 31:17-18, Deuteronomy 20:16, Proverbs 20:30, Amos 3:6, Deuteronomy 13:8, Psalms 3:7, Psalms 52:5, etc.); if not, explain how you can believe that Jesus is the promised savior sent by your god without the messianic prophecies and the ruling rights of the line of David, both of which are in the Old Testament in books such as Isaiah, Zechariah, Daniel, Psalms, etc. (as opposed to, say, believing that Jesus was an irritating nut wandering around saying things that people didn’t like much).
53. Explain why your “just and merciful” god sent bears to kill forty-two children who called his prophet Elisha “baldhead.” (See 2 Kings 2:23-24).
54. If prostitution is wrong, why are there so many examples of it in Genesis? (For instance, Gen 19:8, where Lot offers his daughters to a mob so that his guests can avoid gang rape).
55. What is the sin that people committed that is so incredibly bad that your god had to become flesh and die to correct?
56. Are all members of other faiths bad? Are they all damned to Hell? Justify your answer with quotes from the Bible.
57. Are all atheists/agnostics/humanists/heathens bad? Are they all damned to Hell? Justify your answer with quotes from the Bible.
58. What was your motive in proselytizing to me?
59. Where is Heaven?
60. Where is Hell?
61. Why don’t animals go to heaven or hell when they die? What makes us so special?
62. Why does Satan try to get peoples’ souls?
63. Once Satan has someone’s soul, what does he do with it?
64. Is your god perfect? Justify your answer.
65. Where does our soul stay while we are alive?
66. Explain how you can believe in Satan when your faith is directly descended from the Jewish faith, when the Jews did not even believe in Satan until they absorbed the Egyptian god Set while they were captives in Egypt.
67. Why do evil people often prosper? Justify your answer.
68. Why do good people so often fail to prosper? Justify your answer.
69. When the end of the world comes, will your god raise our actual bodies, or just our souls? Explain.
70. Explain why your god lets airplanes with sinless infants on board crash.
71. What is sin, exactly?
72. If Jesus is perfect, justify the parable of the fig tree (Matthew 21:17-19, Mark 11:14-20).
73. Explain why Christians have harassed Wiccans (”white witches”) for almost two thousand years now, when the central rule of the Wiccan ethical system is “an it harm no one, do what thou wilt.”
74. Explain why Christians (yes, that includes all branches of Christianity) have spread the lie that Jews put Jesus to death when, in actuality, it was the Romans who put Jesus to death. (For a good example of New Testament anti-semetism, see 1 Thessalonians 2:15).
75. Explain why your god created humans as imperfect, then set his standards so high that no one could possibly live up to them, then punishes us for not living up to his standards. Doesn’t this also constitute “entrapment”?
76. If we are created in your god’s image and likeness (Gen 1:27), how can we also be imperfect?
77. Why was it OK for the ancient Israelites to sacrifice animals to their god, while it is wrong for modern religions to sacrifice animals to their gods? Justify your answer.
78. Why would your god confuse people? (See 1 Sam 7:10 and Gen 11:9). Isn’t life confusing enough already?
79. Why would your god cause blindness, deafness, and dumbness? (See Ex 4:11)
80. Why would your god want to damn people by making them believe false things? (See 2 Thessalonians 2:11-12).
81. Should the book of Revelation be taken literally? If not, how should it be taken? Explain and justify your answer.
82. Would it be good for men to castrate themselves? Justify your answer, taking Matthew 19:12 into account.
83. What exactly is faith?
84. All of the various Christian sects ignore parts of the Bible, usually because those parts of the Bible are inconvenient. Explain which parts of the Bible your sect ignores, and explain why it is OK to ignore those parts of the Bible.
85. Why did your god allow Satan to do evil things to Job (Job 2:7 etc.)? Wouldn’t your god better spend his time punishing unbelievers?
86. If Jesus and his father are one (John 10:30), then why does Jesus have to pray (i.e. Matthew 26:39)?
87. Explain your belief in heaven in light of Job 7:9 and Ecclesiastes 9:5.
88. Christ giving himself up on the cross was a great gesture, true, but wouldn’t it have been more sensible for him to continue spreading his message until he died a less painful death? Answer this question in light of your answer to question #1.
89. What is your interpretation of the significance of the temptation of Christ by Satan in the desert (Matthew 4:5-8, Luke 4:5-9)?
90. In view of Matthew 6:5-6, shouldn’t prayer in public schools be discouraged? Support your answer with scripture quotes.
91. Do you feel that the last words of Christ before his death were significant? If so, why do the four gospels attribute three different sentences to Christ as his last? (Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34: “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?”; Luke 23:46: “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit”; John 19:30: “It is finished”).
92. Matthew and Mark say that the last words of Christ were, in Hebrew, El(o)i, El(o)i, lama sabachthani? This has traditionally been translated as, “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” However, a more accurate translation would be, “My El, My El, why has thou forsaken me?” El is the name of a specific pagan god. Why would Jesus call out to a pagan god at the moment of his death?
93. A commonly recited litany in many forms of Christianity is “The LORD is my shepherd.” (Psalm 23:1). Given the fact that the only reasons that people raise sheep are to rob them of their clothes and to kill them for meat, and the fact that sheep will often follow the shepherd to their destruction, do you think that this is any appropriate image for your god? Justify your answer.
94. Why is the theory of the big bang any more (or less) likely that the idea that your god created the universe? Justify your answer.
95. It is commonly asserted that the Christian god is everywhere at the same time, i.e. omnipresent. If hell is the absence of (or separation from) your god, how is this possible?
96. In the Genesis story, your god tells Adam and Eve that the day they eat from the tree of knowledge they will surely die (Gen 2:17). The devil tells them that they will not die, but that their eyes would be opened and they would know the difference between good and evil (Gen 3:5). Wasn’t Satan telling the truth here? Is your god a liar? Justify your answer in light of Jeremiah 20:7 and Ezekiel 14:9.
97. If Lucifer is not as powerful as your god, then he cannot possibly be omnipresent. How could he possibly get as many followers as you seem to think he has?
98. The Bible constantly describes your god as male. In view of the fact that your god supposedly created everything, and creation is very much a female function, isn’t this at least a little bit absurd? Justify your answer.
99. In light of the Trinity, angels, the Virgin Mary, etc., isn’t Christianity polytheistic? If the Trinity is three who are one, why the three names? Justify your answer.
100. Have you read the entire Bible? If not, how can you be devoted enough to try and convert me to a religion that you don’t know that much about? Isn’t knowing as much as possible about something necessary to understanding it? Isn’t understanding something necessary to being completely devoted to it?
101. Why is 2 Kings 19 exactly identical to Isaiah 37?
102. Is Jesus’s three days in Hell really an ultimate sacrifice, when more than half of humanity going to spend eternity there? (See #11)
103. If your sect considers the King James Bible to be the official and/or authoritative translation, justify this in light of the fact that when King James commissioned his translation to be poetic rather than accurate. How can you possibly use an inaccurate translation as your reference for what is/is not the word of your god? If your sect does not use the King James Bible, what translation do they use? Justify the use of that particular translation.
104. Assume that I do not believe that Jesus died for my sins, or that if he did, that necessarily means I will go to your heaven. Name one thing that Jesus ever did for me.
105. Before Mary was knocked up by the Holy Spirit/Ghost, she was never asked for her consent. (She was warned; see Luke 1:31). Mary was also asleep when your god knocked her up; this strongly suggests that he didn’t want her to protest. Does this mean that Mary was raped by your god? Do you think rape is wrong? Explain.
106. According to Luke, Mary knew that she was pregnant with the Messiah. Living in the times she lived in, she must have known the scripture; therefore, she must have known that he would have to suffer horribly during his life. Was it moral for Mary to carry her baby to term, or would it have been more humane for her to have an abortion? Explain.
107. If it was foretold that Jesus was to be crucified, and if he knew that this had been foretold and that it was necessary to the mechanism of the future redemption of sinners, and if he was the son of/identical with your god (and, therefore, presumably wanted sinners to be redeemed), why did he do everything he could to avoid being crucified? (See, for instance, Matthew 26:39).
108. If the Holy Spirit/Ghost is the father of Jesus (Luke 1:35), then why is the central figure of your trinity called “God the Father”?
109. Mary and Jehovah were never joined in wedlock. Does it bother you that Jesus is technically a bastard? How do you feel, in general, about sexual activity outside of marriage?
110. The original Hebrew word for the Holy Ghost/Spirit grammatically implies that the Holy Spirit/Ghost is female in gender. Isn’t this rather silly when you consider the fact that the Holy Ghost/Spirit is actually the father of Jesus (Luke 1:35)?
111. Matthew 28:11-15 contains an account of a conspiracy between the Jews and the Roman soldiers to spread the story that the disciples stole the body of Christ. How could Matthew have known about this, since no Jews or Romans would have admitted to it? If it was such a transparent conspiracy that an outsider could have seen it, why didn’t the other three gospels mention it? Why didn’t the Roman soldiers get into trouble?
112. Most Jews seem to believe that people are basically good people and can work to overcome their sinful tendencies. Most Christian sects, following the teaching of Psalms 51:5, 1 Kings 8:46, Ezekiel 18:4, Isaiah 59:2, and Psalm 143:2, believe that people are completely debased and hopelessly lost in sin, and that only your god can lift us out of this state if he decides to bestow his gift of grace on us. Isn’t this an incredibly negative view of people? Isn’t Judaism a more mature faith just for this reason?
113. How do you, as an individual, feel about Psalm 51:5 and similar passages?
114. What does your sect teach about Psalm 51:5 (and 1 Kings 8:46, etc.), predestination, and similar matters?
115. Don’t you think that the idea that, no matter what we do, we can never be good and righteous without help from your god (Isaiah 64:6) fosters an unnatural and unhealthy dependency on him?
116. Revelation 22:16 says that Jesus is the “offspring of David.” Mary was not descended from David, but Joseph was. Doesn’t this mean that Jesus wasn’t the son of your god at all, but the (mortal and not divine) son of Joseph?
117. What would the correct thing to do be if your god gave you a command that was harmful and/or destructive to you? (A common argument, which has its source in Paul’s writings, states that because clay pots don’t complain about what the potter does with them, people shouldn’t complain about what their maker — supposedly, your god — does with them, but this completely ignores the vitally important argument that clay pots have no sense of self-awareness and cannot think or feel love, pain, anger, etc. If you want to make this argument, you have to deal with this difference.)
118. What (or who) does your sect believe the number 666 represents? Justify your answer.
119. If your god is “just and merciful,” why would he take Solomon’s kingdom away from Solomon’s son while not punishing Solomon, when it was Solomon himself who committed the sin of idolatry? What did Solomon’s son do to deserve punishment? (See 1 Kings 11:12).
120. Why is Solomon commonly considered to be the paragon of wisdom by many Christians, when he constantly sinned against your god (1 Kings 11:4-10, etc.)? Personally, if I had a god talking to me, I’d do what he said.
121. Don’t you think that an anti-sex position (see #22) is a rather silly position for your sect to take when the biblical book “Song of Solomon” is a piece of erotic poetry? (For instance, in Song of Solomon 8:2, the bride asks the bridegroom to “drink of spiced wine of the juice of the pomegranate.” The pomegranate was a symbol of the female genitalia, and the “spiced wine” represented menstrual blood.)
122. Does it bother you that the cross, supposedly a Christian symbol, was actually stolen from the Egyptians? Why or why not? (The Egyptian cross, the ankh, was a male-female symbol similar in concept to the yin-yang. When the Christians stole the ankh from the Egyptians, they removed the female symbol, or yoni, leaving only the masculine symbol — a subtle way of reinforcing the idea that women are lesser beings).
123. How do you explain that Christians are twice as likely to have sadomasochistic tendencies as non-christians?
124. What is the incredibly important doctrinal difference that requires the fighting between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland?
125. Even if your god did create the universe, why does he want to be worshipped? Is your god an egomaniac?
126. What are your beliefs concerning Wicca? (Wicca is sometimes referred to as “white witchcraft.”) How much do you know about Wicca?
127. What do you think the word “Satanist” means?
128. How do you explain the fact that the word “blood” occurs about 400 times in the Bible, depending upon the translation? Isn’t this a rather savage and barbaric way to write a book that is supposed to be at the center of an ethical system?
129. Throughout the Bible, your god commands his followers to wage merciless war on unbelievers (Luke 22:36, Deuteronomy 13:8, Exodus 20:23-25, Deuteronomy 20:16, Matthew 10:34, Numbers 31:17-18, etc). If you are one of his followers, why are you sitting at your desk writing instead of out waging merciless war on unbelievers?
130. Numbers 23:21 says that your god “has not seen wickedness in Israel.” If this is so, explain why your god burned Israelites for complaining (Num 11:1), why he sent a plague against them for eating the meat he had given them (Num 11:33), why he burned people for using incense (Num 16:35), why he sent a plague against the Israelites who accused Moses of wrongdoing (Num 16:44-49), and why he sent fiery snakes among the Israelites (Num 21:5). Is your god a liar, or was it just more convenient for him to lie at that particular place and time, or what?
131. What was it that was so bad about eating an apple that death had to result from that act?
132. What was it about humanity’s torturing and killing of your god’s only son that made your god so happy that he again promised eternal life to everyone who believed in him?
133. How do you explain the fact that Matthew and Luke give different genealogies for Jesus?
134. Matthew says that the prophecy given in Matthew 27:9 was given by Jeremiah. How do you explain that this prophecy was not given by Jeremiah at all, but by Zechariah (in Zech 11:12)?
135. Matthew says (in Matt 2:21) that Jesus dealt in Nazareth so that he could fulfill a prophecy stating that the Messiah would be called a Nazarene. Where is this prophecy in the Old Testament?
136. Matthew says that on the triumphant entry into Jerusalem, Jesus was riding on an ass and a colt (Matt 21:7) How do you explain that the original prophecy (Zech 9:9) stated that Jesus would be riding on only one ass, and the other gospel writers place Jesus only on one ass (Mark 11:7, Luke 19:35, and John 12:15)?
137. In Matthew 1:23, Matthew has the angel say that Jesus would be born of a virgin. However, the prophecy that Matthew is referring to, Isaiah 7:14, uses the Hebrew word almah, which simply refers to a “young woman.” It has nothing to do with sexual experience; the Hebrew word for “virgin” is bethulah. How do you explain this?
138. Isaiah 7:16 seems to say that before Jesus had reached the age of maturity, both of the Jewish countries would be destroyed. Where is the fulfillment of this prophecy in the New Testament?
139. Matthew 1:23 says that Jesus would be called “Immanuel,” which means “God with us.” Why does no one (not even Mary and Joseph, who would be expected to be familiar with this prophecy/command) call him “Immanuel” at any point in the New Testament?
140. How many inconsistencies in the Bible, other than those mentioned in this paper, do you know of? Cite chapter and verse for as many as you have room for.
141. If even the contemplation of sinning is a sin (i.e. “sinning in your heart”; see, for example, Matthew 5:28) and if Jesus was tempted by Satan in the desert (Matthew 4:5-8, Luke 4:5-9), how can you say that Jesus was without sin?
142. Does your sect believe that the existence of your god can be established through a formal proof? Why or why not?
143. Pick a famous argument for the existence of your god, then criticize that argument. (Assume I mean for you to use the academic definition of the word criticize).
144. Pick an argument against the existence of your god. If it is not a famous argument, copy it down here. Criticize this argument. (Assume I mean for you to use the academic definition of the word criticize).
145. What does your sect think of the government? Read Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter 13. Now what do you think of the government? If necessary, reconcile the two views.
146. What is your definition of the word Christian?
147. Why do you think it is that the ancient Greeks, who had a very liberal sexual morality, had many fewer sex crimes (compared to the population) than the United States, which is 85% Christian?
148. If someone accepts Jesus, and is “saved,” but then turns away from Jesus, is that person still saved?
149. Where did your god come from?
150. What are the requirements for being saved? Some sects says that faith alone is enough; others say that faith without works is dead. The Bible supports both of these viewpoints. What does your sect think?
151. If I decide I like the answers to the above questions, where can I get in touch with you? (Give name, address, phone and email if available).
152. What is the name of your sect?
153. How is your sect organized?
154. How can I get in touch with a priest (minister, etc.) of your sect?

The Enemies of Reason - Slaves to Superstition (1 of 5)

A documentary by Richard Dawkins.



Part 1 of 5 - You're watching this part.



Part 2 of 5 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n2LktpT8tY

Part 3 of 5 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOzXm6KoMTU

Part 4 of 5 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-JWGiliOfY

Part 5 of 5 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfySPHYXLpU

10 Questions That Every Intelligent Christian Must Answer

If you are an educated Christian, I would like to talk with you today about an important and interesting question. Have you ever thought about using your college education to think about your faith? Your life and your career demand that you behave and act rationally. Let's apply your critical thinking skills as we discuss 10 simple questions about your religion. The answers will amaze you.

Richard Dawkins - "What if you're wrong?"

Richard Dawkins answers "the most simplest question" from a Liberty U student.

Best Of The Atheist Experience TV Show (2)

Best Of The Atheist Experience TV Show (1)

The Atheist Experience is a weekly cable access television show in Austin, Texas, geared at an atheist and non-atheist audience. The Atheist Experience is produced by the Atheist Community of Austin (ACA), a nonprofit educational corporation to develop and support the atheist community, to provide opportunities for socializing and friendship, to promote secular viewpoints, to encourage positive atheist culture, to defend the first amendment principle of state-church separation, to oppose discrimination against atheists and to work with other organizations in pursuit of common goals.

Response to: "Atheists have faith, just like theists."

Matt Dillahunty responds to the claim that people need as much faith to NOT believe in god, as to believe in god.

Credit:
Atheist Experience

http://www.atheist-experience.com/

02/10/08 #539

How You Can Know There Is No God

by Wayne Atkins:

There is no God. How could I just make an assertion like that? Why wouldn’t I say “I believe there is no God” or “I don’t believe there is a God”? After all, I am making a negative assertion, an assertion that something does not exist. To prove that something does exist, one need only provide a single example of a things existence. But, we are often told, to prove a negative assertion, an assertion that something does not exist, one must conduct an exhaustive search of the universe or have complete knowledge of everything. So to prove God does not exist, we are often told, one must possess god-like abilities. This is rubbish. A negative assertion can be proven.

Take the case of square circles. I can claim with confidence that square circles do not exist. I don’t need to conduct an exhaustive search of the universe or be omniscient to prove this. Just a basic understanding of squares and circles is all that is required. From my basic understanding of squares and circles I can reason that squares and circles are, by definition, contradictory shapes which cannot exist in a single entity. No genius level intellect is required. No omniscience is required. Negative assertions can be proven by demonstrating that whatever is being proposed contains contradictory attributes which cannot exist in the same entity.

The same thing can be done with the existence of God. Genesis 1:1 says “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” That verse refers to the beginning of the heaven and the earth while God is presupposed by the author and described elsewhere in the Bible as eternal. God is described as having no beginning and the existence of everything else is attributed to God. So according to the Bible, and just about every other creationist narrative, God has always existed and created everything else that exists. If true, this would mean that at some point, God was the only thing that existed.

I’ll come back to that point in a moment. I want to talk a little about what thought is and what is required for thought to occur. I once asked a German woman who had been living in the United States for about twenty years if she now thought in English or if she still thought in German and translated on the fly. She told me that she still thought in German. I think in English, Russians think in Russian, the French think in French etc. We use words, audible sounds, to represent objects, people, places or ideas. We use those words as tools in our heads to form ideas or to solve problems. When I say the word “spoon” an English speaking person conjures up the idea of a spoon in their mind.

Some people have never heard the word spoon before. People who were born deaf rely on imagery for thought the way hearing people rely on audible sounds. But what of people who were born deaf and blind? Are they not capable of thought? Of course they are. Helen Keller is a remarkable example of that. But she had to be taught to use her other senses to compensate for her lack of vision and hearing. She learned to read Braille and eventually became a more insightful thinker than most.

But what would happen if a person were born with no sensory organs? What if they had a perfectly good brain, but no way to input information from their own bodies or the world around them? What if they couldn’t see, hear, feel, taste or smell? Could they become equipped to think in that condition? Could they learn some kind of language to handle thought with? They would be completely unaware that they or anything else exists. They would be incapable of thought because they would be aware of nothing and they would have no language with which to describe anything whether object, person, place or idea.

Now turn that scenario upside down. What if a being had unlimited abilities to perceive the world around them, but nothing existed? That being would be in exactly the same predicament as the being with no senses. Now we are talking about the position God would be in prior to creating anything else. God could never have seen, heard, tasted, touched or smelled anything. God could never have heard someone else speak or spoken to someone else. No one else existed yet. There would be no language to speak with. Remember, language describes things and no things exist. Could a being think in this scenario? What would He think about if nothing exists? How could language exist if there were nothing to describe and why would one exist with no-one to listen to your description? Without matter there would be no language. Nouns exist to identify people, places and things. But no people, places or things exist in this scenario. Verbs exist to describe actions. But what action can occur when nothing can be done? Without matter there can be no language and without language there can be no thought. Without thought there can be no intelligent beings. Some people assert that matter could not have come into existence without some intelligent being to create it. But the reality is that no intelligence could exist without matter.

Some would say God could think about Himself since He existed. What would He think about Himself? That He is mighty? What does might mean when you are the only being that exists? Mighty compared to whom? Mighty by what standard? God could have done exactly nothing for all of eternity past. After all, what can there possibly be to do if nothing exists and how could a being who had never done anything be described as mighty? Could He consider Himself holy? Again, by what standard? Because He hadn’t sinned? Tell me what sin can be committed when nothing and no-one exists but you? He couldn’t lie or steal or kill or covet. Holiness is meaningless without context because no sin could be committed. Every description of God would have to be made in the context of something else and if there was nothing else then there wasn’t even a sufficient context for a God to think about Himself.

The knee-jerk reaction of most theists is to claim that I am describing the framework with which human beings think and then projecting that onto God who is not bound by such a framework. Our feeble human minds simply cannot approach an understanding of a mind like God’s they would say. But most human minds are fully capable of understanding straightforward logic and that is what I am presenting here. Intelligence requires thought. All thought requires language. All language requires something to describe and a means for communicating that description. Therefore, intelligence cannot exist without matter. So when someone says that we simply cannot understand how God was capable of thought before the existence of matter because we cannot understand how God’s mind works, what they are really saying is that the idea that any being could be capable of thought before the existence matter is illogical. I would agree with that. It is completely illogical.

“Hold on!” says the theist. “In addition to being eternal, God is omniscient. God knows everything and He always has. So God never needed sensory input to learn about anything. And since God knows the future, all languages were available to him to think with. Since God is not bound by time he has always been aware of everything that would eventually exist.” On the surface this appears to be a convenient way out of this conundrum. However, all it does is create a problem I like to call the Batman conundrum.

When my son was about six years old he was watching a Batman cartoon on television. Whenever Batman got into a bind he would retrieve some gadget concealed in his belt that would allow him to do something he otherwise wouldn’t be able to do. After watching him pull several bulky gadgets out of his thin belt my son remarked that Batman couldn’t really keep that much stuff in that tiny little belt. Even at his age he recognized that it just wasn’t possible for all of those items to exist in the same belt. But to advance the plot, the cartoon´s writers kept on imagining more gadgets in Batman’s belt. When monotheists first began describing a single deity to replace the myriad Gods people used to worship, they did the same thing. They kept adding attributes that they thought would ensure that their deity was the greatest deity ever conceived. They made him eternal. After all, if God is to be an acceptable explanation for the existence of the universe, He had to exist before the universe. And of course people would ask who created God, so He had to be uncreated and eternal or people would assume that God’s creator was greater than God Himself. Then they added omnipotence and omniscience. He was all-powerful and all-knowing. But they assert that God was creative; that He designed everything that now exists. The problem is that attributes like creativity and eternal omniscience are contradictory. They cannot exist in the same entity.

If God knew everything and always had for all of eternity, then God could have never had an original thought. My former pastor once asked “Has it ever occurred to you that nothing has ever occurred to God?” I don’t think he understood the significance of that question when he asked it. Despite what the Discovery Institute, the self-proclaimed leading proponent of intelligent design, would have you believe, a God who has always known everything can’t be credited with designing anything. Everything would have always existed, at least conceptually, in the mind of God for all of eternity past.

I could take raw materials and produce a coffee cup. I could decide what size and color I wanted and what shape the handle would be and I could then use raw materials to make it. But I could not take credit for designing “the coffee cup” because I already have prior knowledge of what a coffee cup is and what it does. I can’t claim the concept as my own original idea because the concept already exists and I knew that. My prior knowledge of coffee cups prevents me from taking credit for the idea. Likewise, if everything always existed in the mind of God, at what point could it be said that God designed anything? For God to take credit for designing something, for creating the concept of something, there would have had to be a point at which that concept did not exist. For an omniscient, eternal God there would have never been a time when the “design” for everything didn’t already exist and God wasn’t already aware of it.

Creativity and eternal omniscience do not mix to make a greater God. They tie His hands and limit His ability to create. They reduce Him to, at best, a kind of information storage system for the future universe, a sort of hard drive to which nothing can be added. God would have been bound to create everything a certain way, that is, He could not create anything differently than His prior knowledge allowed. If He wanted to create something differently than it currently is, then He would have known that for all of eternity past and the current design would have never existed. He would be locked in by His prior knowledge. That does not describe a thinking, creative God. A being who has always known everything cannot consider evidence and make a decision, change His mind or create anything new. Again, what is there for a being like that to think about? Everything would have already been designed, conceived, decided and planned for all of eternity past. Just picture this deity, alone in nothingness, incapable of thought, incapable of learning, incapable of creativity, powerless to change the way things will be without compromising His prior knowledge of how things will be, waiting for all of eternity past to materialize the universe exactly the way it always existed conceptually. Absurd isn’t it?

There is no God. God is a square circle. The existence of matter is not dependent upon the existence of some intelligent designer. The existence of intelligence is dependent upon the existence of matter. Throwing attributes like omniscience at a deity doesn’t resolve the issue. It only creates different and equally disturbing contradictions.